Café Mercato

Went back to our new lowry rest/​bar area and had another stellar evening out. Wasn’t sure last time but server/​bartender, Paul, was our guy and as good if not better than before. We didn’t have full meals, apps and wine/​cocktails. Paul was extremely knowledgeable again on all menus suggestions and choices. He made a martini for my wife, something not offerred on menu of drinks, that she said was one of the best she’s had.
There was a good buzz and vibe in room. Food was good, timing was good, and just another overall great experience that has made Paul and Mercato new favorites.

My wife and I enjoyed this restaurant so much last week that we decided to return four days later. Amazingly, it was better the second time than the first. Our waiter, Paul, was extremely attentive, patient and accommodating. He explained the menu and went the «extra mile» to confirm that an «entrée» could be converted to a «side.» Highly recommend the «Fish Trio»…served to perfection. Can’t wait until the weather improves so we can enjoy the patio.

Stopped into this Lowry restaurant last weekend and had a great experience. We sat in bar area of place at a table off of bar, our server was Paul or Pete, sorry can’t remember. He walked us through every portion of our meal, both with wine pairings and all of our food. The salads, appetizer and entrees were all excellent. Service was soo on point, not rushed and perfect timing between courses. Food was great, very authentic Italian, great flavors, very fresh. Overall this was a perfect, nice experience, good job Mercato!

Food & service were good, however entire Eve was ruined because the restaurant made the decision to cram in extra tables this evening (it was the Saturday night before Valentine’s). We were tempted to get up and leave but even felt uncomfortable in doing so. Our small table was like 8″ from table on both sides. The waiter even apologized for not being able to serve easily the crowded table.

Excellent Italian food! Ended up here after a mishap with a reservation at a neighbouring restaurant. The staff here were so warm and inviting. We sat at the chef’s table/​bar so we had a bird’s eye view of the kitchen. Every dish that came out looked stunning. Our own food was absolutely delicious!!! By far it is the best Italian food I have had in Denver!

I’ve been to their sister restaurant, Locando del Borgo, and thought the service wasn’t great and food bland but thought I’d try this one since it’s close to my office. Had the mussels and clams and the broth tasted like just a bland tomato broth. The gelato and service was good but I don’t think it made up for the food enough to go back.

Some of the best food in Denver! The calamari was amazing and the lava cake will keep you dreaming for days. The wait staff are wonderful, the atmosphere is warm, and I enjoy sitting at the bar over looking the kitchen. The cooks and chef are all professional, its a flawlessly smooth kitchen, and all the dishes are cooked to perfection.

I’ve long been a fan of their sister restaurant, Locanda del Borgo, so I figured I would like this place as well. I went here with a large group and pretty much everyone really enjoyed it. There’s a great menu with plenty of interesting choices, and a decent wine list as well, though it is much more expansive for full bottles than by the glass. Many people had trouble reading the menus, however, because of very small type and dim lighting — just a note for those who have this issue. The food, while a bit pricey, is very high quality and comparable to what I’ve had in the past at the other restaurant owned by the same chef. Pasta was cooked just to my liking and I also sampled the swordfish dish, which was excellent. They also do an interesting take on the basic Caesar salad, adding avocado and a lemony dressing. The bread wasn’t anything fantastic, but the salads and entrees were very well prepared. Around our big table, I saw a variety of dishes and salads, including the daily special, and every one looked really good, so I’ve got a lot to try in future visits. Nobody got pizzas, but with the giant wood oven, I bet they’ll be good too. They get a bonus as well for accommodating a big party and doing separate checks for each guest without a hassle. Glad this place is here, though I do worry that with it being so close to Locanda, it will just wind up splitting the business with itself instead of adding more new customers. But either way, this is a great addition to the neighborhood.

I was stoked on trying Café Mercato because of a positive dining experience I had with their neighbor restaurant, North County. My expectations were high because my family chose this restaurant to celebrate my dads birthday.
Quick description: Classic Italian cuisine. Contemporary, quiet, more upscale setting (I wouldn’t take kids there).
First impressions can make or break anything. Café Mercato’s first impression was, how do you say, not good. Let me list a couple reasons why:
–We had called way in advance for my dads birthday. You would think, knowing it’s a special occasion, they would set us up with a nice table but instead, we got jammed into a table that was right next to the kitchen and the front door that just felt crammed. My family and I felt like a can of sardines.
— Entrees just didn’t do it for me. Lacked any real unique flavor. Every dish was generic and mediocre, as if I could have got the same thing from Olive Garden. If I’m paying fine dining prices, I expect some real fine dining dishes.
— The service was ehh. Although our server was nice he lacked on the «serve» part of his job title. My family had been seated for a good 30 minutes before everyone was asked what they wanted to drink. We also did not have all of our table settings set, even though we had a reservation with the amount of people set weeks before. I find that unacceptable, regardless of how nice the server was.
— My last complaint, is for all my drinkers out there. The majority of fine dining restaurants I’ve been too, have some sort of speciality cocktails, but to my surprise, they had none. Not a big deal, but a let down nonetheless.
Our experience wasn’t all that bad as we had some positive notes. Pizza was good, fresh, and had that perfect balance of doughiness and crispiness. The Molten lava cake for dessert, was an excellent dish that had my whole table battling over every bite. A couple positives but not enough to make up for all the negatives.
Unfortunately, Café Mercato did not meet my personal criteria for giving it a second chance and I will not be dining there again. We sadly were left extremely disappointing.

dont get the limoncello !
ever clear (realy!?). it tasted like i was at a frat party.

Wanted to like this place, because Lowry needs some great international cuisine restaurants — but this isn’t it. Like other reviewers, I also liked the burrata appetizer, and also thought their store-​bought bread with cheap olive oil was a waste of calories (so skip it).
The pizza is good, although the dough was salty. Actually, our entire meal was on the salty side and much too greasy.

I am very excited that this restaurant opened in Lowry. I have been several times for dinner and once for Happy Hour. I enjoy the atmosphere and the food is quite good. I really like the wine list too! The mussels are delicious and the bread they bring you is to die for.

We love this place! We ate on the patio on a warm fall night with our puppy. Everything we ate that night was surprisingly good from the fresh salad and bruschetta to the main dish (highly recommend the lasagne even though it is a cliché item to order. Truly amazing!) and not to be missed, the hazelnut tart with hazelnut gelato. We walked out of there stuffed, but so happy. I can’t believe we can walk to such great restaurants here in Lowry.

Dining alone is always an interesting experience especially when you accidentally stumble into the restaurant thinking you were heading into the one next door but then by the time you’ve realized you were in the wrong one you feel too sheepish to leave. The above scenario may have happened to yours truly recently… But it turned out great.
I saddled up to the bar and looking over the menu with a couple of recommendations I settled in the ricotta gnocchi. Side note: the bartender pronounced the word with the perfect Italian accent and that alone right there made me think «This could be a good sign!»
Out of the kitchen in less than five minutes came my plate of gnocchi. I was skeptical it could be any good since it arrived so quickly but the bartender assured me that because I was dining alone and it was a slow night in the dining area the kitchen had been able to get to my order quickly. He was right. The gnocchi were lightly airy pillows of deliciousness and the mushroom sauce it was served in was just delicious. Creamy and seasoned so well. Great portion size as well. I ate every bite and was full but didn’t feel stuffed.
Service was friendly and not overbearing and as noted food came out promptly. Will return, next time on purpose! :)

There’s a beautiful simplicity to Italian food. The Americanized version of Italian food is a bit of an injustice to what true good Italian food is all about.
Here at Café Mercato you have a chef who is not only Italian, but has established a loyal following on Colorado from his days up in Edwards near Aspen to Lowry.
This chef single-​handed my raised the benchmark for ‘good food’ not only in this neighborhood (and Hilltop) but for much of Denver.
This city is now a legit foodie city thanks to the visionary hard work of chefs who stay true to the right way of food preparation. And his wine list is second to none. True wine geeks will appreciate the stellar hand picked selections.
Great work, chef!

We went with another family to try Café Mercato and had a mixed experience.
Pros:
Great patio and family friendly
The Burrata and tomato salad appetizers were delicious
Service was good
Majority of our meals were good
Cons:
One of our meals was almost inedible and the most simple. Spaghetti with olive oil and garlic was super salty and drenched in oil. Ick!
As I mentioned, meals were good… but not great.
Prices were a tad high for the quality.

This restaurant was a real find. The vegetable lasagna was superb. Our table decided they would get it on the next visit.
Our waiter was patient and very professional. The manager came over just as we were finishing our meal to check if we were satisfied. I appreciated not having our meal interrupted by a manager as so often happens. He had perfect timing and chatted just the right amount of time.
We’ll be back!

Went to this trendy little place with some friends and had the best time! Our host was exceptional.
We ordered a few appetizers, with the brussel sprouts being one of them. Everyone agreed they were delicious. Except for me, I don’t like the little green things. I did enjoy my meat ravioli which was perfectly cooked and very tasty.
We chose to sit outside and the patio area is very nice. The tables are far enough apart that you don’t feel crowded or like you’re sitting in your neighbors lap.
A wonderful dining experience.

Really great food and service tonight. We ordered grilled brussel sprouts as an appetizer. mmmn. Then I really was impressed with the perfectly prepared halibut with a lemon caper sauce. My dining partner enjoyed her Chefs choice fish trio… Each selection had a nice side of roasted veggies.
Both of us enjoyed our wine selections… The Pino Noir was especially tasty.
Daniel, our service paid attention to all of the details. He balanced being attentive yet not at all intrusive. The manager stopped by to chat and also was great and made sure we were having a good time.
The restaurant has great ambience and shares a parking lot with the Lowry air force base hangars. Very cool hipster neighborhood!
Topped the dinner off with Gelato.. And one of the best tiramasu offerings ever…
I recommend this restaurant and will return!

Brunch at Café Mercato fell flat for me. It’s not that the food was particularly bad, nor was it great: The problem is that it wasn’t memorable. Really. I don’t remember what I ordered. That’s not a good sign for a food-​driven humanoid like myself. I recall ordering a mimosa ($ 8) that was mediocre. Plates for brunch run about $ 12 – 16. So if I had to guess, whatever I ordered was larger than a golf ball, smaller than a toaster, and probably around $ 14. Needless to say, Café Mercato does not make the cut for my Sunday brunch options.

Admittedly, I don’t have a high opinion about suburban restaurants. The quality just doesn’t tend to be as high as it is in a city’s center. That’s what Mercato reminds me of. It’s definitely not as bad as a generic cost cutting chain, but it was not at all what I was hoping for.
I came here for Sunday brunch because it’s in walking distance and the weather was beautiful. We were really in the mood for a nice patio. Mercato has a patio, there just weren’t any tables out. Thankfully, the large overhead door was open and we were able to sit right by it. The last customers before us must’ve thought the same as the table hadn’t actually been cleaned.
The coffee is delicious, and the sourdough bread was great as well although I could do without the balsamic in the olive oil. My crapes were decent but my husband’s sausage dish was much better.
The restaurant interior was nice. Although the music was so random and distracting. All in all, better than the delectable egg but not somewhere I’ll ever take anyone I want to impress. Hopefully their dinner service is better.

I went here with a colleague last Friday for lunch and it was pretty disappointing. It’s a great space and really well decorated. When we ordered we let our server know our time was limited as we had to get back to work, but that didn’t really seem to matter even though the restaurant wasn’t busy. The server was unfortunately the only person helping any of the 5 parties there at the time, one of which had 12 people in it. It would have been nice to see all the other staff standing around help her out in some way.
We ordered the meatballs, which had good flavor and the sauce they came in was delicious, but the meatballs were rubbery and tough. We both ordered the fennel chicken sandwich as well. The meatballs came out really quickly, but the sandwiches took a long time to come out. We ended up asking our server to put them in to go boxes so we could eat them on the way back to work. We had to ask multiple times for the sandwiches as they were just sitting in boxes at the bar while we sat and waited. Once we got them the to go boxes were also covered in grease, which was kind of gross and mine wouldn’t stay closed, which didn’t really seem to matter to our server.
The sandwiches were ok, but not worth $ 12, especially as they were small and don’t come with a side except some overdressed arugula. I had asked that the spinach on the sandwich be replaced with another type of greens, but it didn’t have anything on it except a mushy tomato slice, which isn’t included in the description. There also wasn’t any shaved fennel on the sandwich, which was the main reason I had ordered it. All in all, it was not a meal that should have cost us each $ 22.
I’ll probably go back and try the pizza as there aren’t too many places in Lowry to eat, but hopefully the food and service will be a lot better than the first visit.